JK Tyre to set up Rs 1,500 cr facility

JK Tyre & Industries Ltd on Thursday signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Tamil Nadu government for setting up a Rs 1,500-crore greenfield facility at Sriperumbudur here.

“We had a choice of three states (Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh) in South, but we decided to set up our facility in Tamil Nadu since it is emerging as an auto hub,” said company vice chairman and managing director Raghupati Singhania, who was here to sign the MoU.

The facility would generate Rs 200 crore every year for the exchequer and create 1,000 skilled jobs, he said.

Sriperumbudur is already home to quite a few auto majors, including Hyundai, and is also close to Oragadam, where Nissan, Daimler and others have set up their units. 

JK Tyres is planning to commence production by the end of 2011 and reach full capacity in the beginning of 2012. The plant will have a capacity of 5 million passenger cars and 600,000 truck bus radial tyres every year.

Singhania said the proposed plant was environment-friendly and equipped with technology that will, among others, ensure zero carbon leakage and maximise use of natural resources. 

The company currently has eight plants across the world, of which five are in India and three in Mexico.

Meanwhile, the company has rolled out India's first 3.5 tonne 57-inch ultra-large size tyre for the off the road (OTR) earth-moving equipment. The company has invested around Rs 130 crore in its Mysore facility in Karnataka to manufacture these tyres.  

The Mysore project is a result of an agreement between public sector BEML and JK Tyre for supply of these ultra-large tyres to BEML for their modern vehicles and to Coal India Ltd, which is one of the largest consumers of OTR tyres in the world.

“We are already a major player in the OTR tyre segment and have presence across India in almost all applications like mining, rock excavating, quarrying, dam building and port operations,” he said.